Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. This has to be one of the most memorable Holiday seasons. (No, I am not doing a electronic Christmas card. Maybe by Valentines day the Christmas card will go out. Just having a hard time picking which pictures I want to use of the dogs and cat).
The time before, during and after Christmas/New Years is the busiest of the year at the resort and other activities. Time flies by and now we are in January. With the lack of snow in December, it seems like we went from a long November to January. The only thing making it like January is have the ground white and the trails skiable and temps in single digits. But today felt like March..which means February will be cold and snowy?!?!
This is the first Christmas eve and definitely latest I have ever mountain biked in December on the mtb singletrack at Maplelag. Jake and I rode the twin lakes singletrack Christmas eve and the riding was really fun even with a couple of inches on the ground. Plenty of traction and fast rolling.
Suicide hill was hanging on to snow and a quick ski Christmas eve to check the skier traffic. Not often you can do both.
Over to Park Rapids for church and family fun. Pretty lucky Santa still swings on by.
Triple crock pot action.
Anything edible with bacon wrapped around it. 
Took 13 years to knock off the first two bottles of aquavit, now on to the third. Always helps when more family is present. Hard to describe to feeling in the stomach when potato alcohol mixes with lutefisk, the above and everything else.
All good when club soda is chilling on the deck. Not sure who invented it, but amazing. Good way to cap the evening. The best thing is you can make it at home now.
Ski meets and hockey games keeping the wheels moving on the Yukon across nw MN during the Holidays. Jens and I caught one of the meets at Mt Itasca which has hosted all the meets this year. The snow is fast and 33 degrees and sunny doesn't get much better.
Having to cancel the ski camps and all the ski teams canceling after Christmas was a major bummer but as we moved closer to new years, the occupancy went up and folks came even if the skiing was marginal at best. Lake skiing added to the activities and was a different but fun time frame. We had two guests from D.C., Claudia and Holly who came with attitudes that are priceless and motivated a lot of people. Super positive and making the most of the situation doing everything they could. 
Set up the two Salsa so they could do some snow biking for the first time. Very fortunate to have guests such as them.
Put the dark house out and tried the luck at spearing. We don't have the patience to sit it out like we should but some guests did spear a few northerns. Hope to get out there during the week this winter.
After a lot of late nights working on the rink, finally got it going just when the snow came shutting down the lake skating. Jon had a bunch of hockey buddies over for New Years and seeing them goof around is as good as it gets and worth all the cold hands and frozen parts. Even had the goalie which is awesome.
Good times on New Years eve and some good stories adding to the memorable Holiday season. 1:30am swing by the warming house to stoke the fire and shut off lights but someone other than Carlos enjoying the chair! Cheers!
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